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(Mizzima News/IFEX) - October 27, 2010 - Burmese Internet users on the Bagan Net provider are having their connections cut regularly and when working, they slow to a crawl, according to cybercafé owners and surfers.

With little more than a week until election day, Burma's Bagan Net internet service from Myanmar Teleport had been very poor for the past three days, they said, adding that they had no warning of impending difficulties.

"Bagan Net told us nothing . . . The Internet connection has been cut frequently but we can access local websites such as 'Myanmar Times' online and 'People Magazine's' website. Although we could access our e-mail occasionally, after 10 minutes of use, the connection breaks down. Sometimes, we can use just about five minutes", a cybercafé owner in Kyauktada Township, downtown Rangoon, told Mizzima.

The Burmese junta's severe censorship laws and poor development of networks has earned Burma's Internet access environment the pejorative nickname of the "Myanmar Wide Web".

An editor from a weekly journal told Mizzima: "I think that the closer we come to election day, the more often connections will be cut. I think their [the Burmese junta's] intention is to block the flow of information out of the country. Not only Internet connections, but also phone links have been disturbed. People think the junta is doing it intentionally".

Because of the poor Internet connection, the number of Net users had declined, another cybercafé owner said.

"Just a few people came to use the Internet. They used to use Facebook and Google Talk, but these days, they could not access them . . . my cybercafé has nearly been empty", the owner from Thingangyun Township told Mizzima.

An Internet user said: "We can't use the Internet. Some cybercafés were closed. One of my friends who needed a Departure Form [D Form] to go to a foreign country could not apply online as the government's D Form site was down. We haven't been able to surf other sites as well. I went to many cybercafés . . . but the connection was down at all of them".

Web connections in Arakan, Kachin, and Karen states and Tenasserim, Mandalay and Sagaing Divisions have also been very slow.

A Bagan Net employee said that he was unaware of when connections would be restored.

An official in charge of the provider said connections were under maintenance, according to a cybercafé owner in South Okkalapa Township, Rangoon Division.

Since the monk-led "Saffron Revolution" of 2007, the junta has strictly controlled access to the Internet. During the anti-government protests that year, the junta shut down all services out of the country, claiming a break in an underwater cable.

Net users and observers have accused the junta of again disturbing services intentionally as the election, to be held on November 7, draws near.

Nearly 60,000 Burmese have their own Internet connections, according to figures from the Ministry of Communication, Post and Telegraph.

While Burma has been connected to the World Wide Web since 2000, the junta considers use of the Internet so threatening that just connecting can be seen, under its laws, as a dissident act. The military government restricts access using censoring software that blocks sites, especially free online e-mail and pornography. The government also charges exorbitant fees for access.

Restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression and assembly persist, amid the government's failure to contend with the range of rights-abusing laws that have been long used to criminalize free speech and prosecute dissidents.As part of the military's "clearance operations" in northern Rakhine State, where thousands of Rohingya Muslims face rampant and systemic human rights violations, the authorities denied independent journalists access to the region since early October.

An officer of the Myanmar army recently filed a criminal complaint against two journalists for allegedly sowing disunity among the military. Even though mediation by the Press Council caused the military to withdraw the case, this incident demonstrates how the military continues to throw its weight to get back at what it perceives as negative publicity.

The Broadcasting Law, approved in August, enabled private companies to enter the broadcast market for the first time. However, it maintains presidential control over the broadcasting sector, and the Broadcasting Council it established is susceptible to political interference.

The report surveys the rocky landscape for media and public discourse since the ruling military junta lifted the curtain on the southeast Asian nation in 2012 after five decades of isolation from the modern world.

As the election looms for later this year, incidents in 2014 and in early 2015 involving the press raises serious questions on the genuineness of media freedom in Burma. The situation is alarming as the state seems to have heaped all the faults and fines on the media in the past year, which has seen a media worker being killed in October on the pretext of national security. International assistance has poured into the country to develop the media aimed at lifting and sustaining the state of media freedom. However, a viable press freedom environment seems unlikely to materialise in Burma before the end of this administration.

There is some skepticism about how much influence Burma's youth movement can assert in terms of political change. Still, activists have benefited from greater access to the Internet, which has brought a new side to the online community after decades of heavy censorship

Burma is at a crossroads. The period of transition since 2010 has opened up the space for freedom of expression to an extent unpredicted by even the most optimistic in the country. Yet this space is highly contingent on a number of volatile factors.

The media landscape in Burma is more open than ever, as President Thein Sein releases imprisoned journalists and abolishes the former censorship regime. But many threats and obstacles to truly unfettered reporting remain, including restrictive laws held over from the previous military regime. The wider government’s commitment to a more open reporting environment is in doubt.

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